If you liked Palm Royale, Apples Never Fall and Mr. & Mrs. American Pie, then you'll love CHARITY BASHED! It's a fun, comedy-drama set in Palm Beach, Florida, with plenty of juicy gossip, mystery, a crime or two, satire, secrets and sunshine. This is the snooty and elite resort barrier Island where those Peacock and Apple TV+ streaming shows take place. Key word: "barrier." CHARITY BASHED takes you deep inside Netflix territory; those hidden, posh enclaves, such as the Palm Beach Country Club, which was ground zero for the Madoff scandal. Meaning a sneak peek at the customs, the culture, the back stabbing. Publishers Weekly, a Top Amazon Reviewer and assorted bookstagramers and influencers highly recommend this fictional account of the restless and the ruthless. The novel plot: after a $10 million donor is found dead in an oceanfront pool; a charity fundraiser stops panhandling amongst the 1%, and begins investigating fraud, mayhem, murder and relentless social climbing. In that order. Enjoy! P.S. Apologies to Abe Sylvia, Liane Moriarty and Juliet McDaniel. Consider this an hommage. This frothy confection is equal parts glitter and grunge--a tabloid kingpin is murdered in Palm Beach and social worker Justine Romanoff descends into the decadent world of high-end philanthropy to solve the case...the prose is generally buoyant, reading like a catty gossip column as savage portraits of the sin-soaked elite parade across Justine's path, tagged with copious and specific dollar amounts like ancient epithets. Following a trail of embezzlement, vehicular fraud, and blackmail, Justine discovers the lengths the latest wife of the victim would go to protect her reputation, and how far her employer would go to keep himself in a position to siphon off his charity's income...the novel is a solid effort and a tight social drama that...sparkles. --------Publishers Weekly .....When a wealthy Palm Beach scion is killed by a bronze garden gnome and found floating in his multimilliondollar estate pool, Justine, the heroine of Sharon Geltner's latest novel CHARITY BASHED and self-proclaimed chief panhandler for a local charity, gets involved in "fraud, mayhem, murder and relentless social climbing in that order." Exposed to the world of socialites and the moneyed class through volunteer work at many nonprofits in Washington, D.C. and South Florida, Geltner, a Boca Raton resident, worked at many charities.... [Earlier] as a reporter, Geltner became intrigued when she discovered discrepancies in a so-called royal's title. "It got me thinking about hidden identities and the relationship between many charities and their wealthy donors," she said. "I'm fascinated by Palm Beach for its wealth, and much of that wealth fuels the charitable economy. Fundraising is like politics and sausage - you don't want to see how it's made." The novel features local color, including recognizable people, places and events. Tina Pugliese, who owns a communications firm in Boynton Beach, said she enjoyed the book and Geltner's writing style, with liberal doses of sarcasm and dry humor, reminding her of suspense writer Nelson DeMille. "I loved it," she said. "It was engaging, charming and humorous. It was especially fun following Justine around familiar South Florida landmarks." -----Jan Engoren, South Florida Sun-Sentinel A book by author Sharon Geltner about a murder on Palm Beach intertwined into a humorous story about an unexplored world of charity, status seeking and social climbing... The story begins with Vincent Louis, a tabloid tycoon and big-time charity donor, being found murdered in the pool of his Palm Beach home. Without spoiling the plot, Justine Romanoff, an observant social worker working at a Palm Beach charity, finds herself smack dab in the middle of the scene and hungry to dig deeper to solve the murder case. Throughout the story Romanoff finds humor in aspects of Palm Beach life. An experience Geltner had as a newspaper reporter where she was once told she'd be banned from Boca Raton by a philanthropist angry over her publishing information that the high-level donor was operating under a fake title got the wheels spinning in terms of her writing a book. "It's a dynamic area we live in. I found it fascinating how unexplored the world of charity is. I would like to say it's all based on altruism, doing the right thing and offering a helping hand. It's not just people in gowns and tiaras. There's politics involved too," Geltner said. ...."I did work at non-profits for some time. The [snarky] humor Justine (protagonist in CHARITY BASHED) exhibits isn't just peculiar to her. Social workers, who work at these charities, some of them have Master's Degrees and are paid very little. There's a juxtaposition or contrast. People are working these jobs as a labor of love. They have bills to pay. I did a lot of fundraising for these charities and the contrast was so great between the haves and have-nots, people who needed